Speed of Life (15 page)

“Oh, well, I'm so glad I gave up the rest of my shift so I can go to Forward Momentum.”

“Have a good time,” Mom says, not looking up from her puzzle.

I should know by now that sarcasm's lost on Mom. I go to pick up Nat, who is a whimpering mess, and she stretches her arms up to me. She's got tear streaks down her cheeks and she totally stinks.

“Did you feed her?” I ask Mom.

“Was I supposed to?”

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “We'd all fucking starve to death if we relied on you for common sense.”

“Funny,” she says, not looking up from her crossword. “I thought I was doing you and your sister a favor.”

I bite back my response. I don't trust myself not to start yelling again, and I don't really have time for that shit. In the bedroom, I change Nat, promising her food as soon as she's dressed again. I yank off my work shirt and pull on a flannel I find on the floor. Good enough. When we go out to the kitchen, Mom's made a bottle.

“Thanks,” I say. I grab a jar of carrots and lentils to feed her at Forward Momentum. I have to come back in for her car seat, which is still in the tub, but eventually I get Nat settled in the back seat and she holds her bottle between her palms, sucking greedily.

“I'm sorry, baby,” I tell her.

Once I'm buckled in, I make myself take five calming breaths before I back out. Jocelyn would be so proud. Maybe I
am
learning something at all these classes. We're fifteen minutes late, but at least we're there and I won't get fined or anything. We have a speaker on nutrition and everything goes okay until the very end. I'm so tired and stressed that I pack up Nat but forget to get my free baby stuff. As I'm strapping her into the car seat, Jocelyn comes out to the parking lot with the bag of freebies.

“I thought you might want this,” she says.

“Yeah, thanks.”

Jocelyn watches me for a second and then says, “Honey? How old is that seat?”

“What?”

“Where'd you get that car seat? How old is it?”

“Umm . . . I don't know. My cousin gave it to me, but I think she got it used.”

“Did you know car seats expire?”

“Like milk?” I say, trying to make a joke.

She smiles. “Exactly like milk. Lift her out of there and I'll show you.”

The last thing I want to do is take Nat out of the car seat, but Jocelyn's waiting. I don't have any choice. I bounce Nat in my arms while Jocelyn unbuckles the straps and pulls out the entire seat. She turns it over and shows me the base.

“Just like I thought. This one expired in 2010.”

It doesn't take a genius to know how she spotted that I had an old car seat . . . the plastic is grubby from Jade's kids, and the fabric's worn through in places. “It seems okay to me.”

“You're going to have to get something else,” Jocelyn says. “It's not safe.”

Great.

“But—”

“It's the law.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I am so, so, so, so, so, so tired. Why do I have to be in charge of everything? Why is everyone looking to me to solve all their problems? Mom with the rent, Gil with . . . well, everything, Amber's screw-ups? And especially Nat. I want to collapse onto the asphalt and sink down into it and disappear. But I can't show any weakness because then Jocelyn will call child services and say we can't take care of our baby. I force myself to straighten up.

I sigh. “I'll check into it.”

“I'm serious,” Jocelyn says. “I can't let you drive her around in that.”

It hits me that she actually means right now. “But how am I supposed to get her home?”

Now it's her turn to sigh. “All right, well, it's probably better than nothing for tonight. But promise me you won't use it again.”

I promise and she finally lets me go.

Fan-fucking-tabulous.

First a fifty-eight-dollar fine and now I'm supposed to pull a new car seat out of my butt. And to think that I thought the day I got into McPherson would be one I'd want to remember forever.

By the time me and Nat get home from Forward Momentum, my head is pounding, my stomach's knotted up with sharp pains, and the baby's caught my mood. She's whiny and irritable as I lift her out of the car, kicking at me with her little feet. All I want to do is hand her off to Amber and crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. What should've been my secret to enjoy until I was ready to share it was stolen from me by the inept Ms. Spellerman.

I have no doubt how it went down. Ms. Spellerman was probably coming back from the front office after emptying her inbox and saw Amber. Because I've been bugging her, she remembered who I was and said, “Oh, Miss Robbins, I have your letter for you.”

Amber must've known she'd mixed us up but figured it would be easier to take whatever the woman had for me and hand it over later. But then Ms. Spellerman probably encouraged her to open it right there, thinking she could congratulate me or console me, however it worked out. And so Amber, always curious and thinking it really wouldn't matter because we don't have any secrets, opened my letter.

And that's when I came around the corner.

I shake off the memory and do the usual routine: unload Nat and leave her in the kitchen, feed Bonehead, clean up his turds, and put him in the car for the night. My life seems to revolve around cleaning up shit these days.

There's no one around in the house, so my dreams of pawning off Nat on my family dissolve. My stomach hurts so much, I swear there's something eating me from the inside. In the kitchen, I have to hold on to the back of the chair and take long, slow, deep breaths until the pain eases. The television's off and I assume Amber's gone out because it's only nine o'clock and she never goes to bed this early. Anger pulses through me. It's almost cold enough in the house to see my breath, but I'm flushed and hot from the waves of pain. All day I've felt guilty, but right now my sister's being such a bitch that I could shake her. No matter how bad she's screwed up in the past, I've always listened to her, given her a chance to explain. She's actually lucky she's not around, because I want to throw something at her.

I take Natalie into the bedroom, which has been pitch-black ever since the night-light burned out. I flip on the floor lamp and stop and stare. Amber's divided the room in half by hanging a blanket from the rafters—​a couple of blankets, actually, and an old stained sheet I think belongs to Bonehead. She's clearly trying to block off her bed so she doesn't have to look at me. Since the room's only the size of a single-car garage, it's now shrunk considerably and feels even more claustrophobic than usual. My breathing goes all weird and shallow, and I have to set Natalie's carrier down fast because I'm woozy. I sink onto my bed. Maybe I have the flu again. No—​it's a combo of being pissed and feeling guilty that's making me so shaky.

“What the hell's all this?” I ask. I know Amber's behind the curtain, probably just lying there, but she doesn't answer, so I yank one of the blankets down.

Sure enough, she jumps off her bed and grabs it from the floor. “Stop it. Go away.” I watch her struggle to hang it back up, and all the fight goes out of me. If she wants to be like this, I don't even care.

“Whatever,” I say. “Let me know if you decide to grow up.”

She loses her balance and almost falls off her bed, but I don't even reach out to steady her. I'm too tired to fix this now. I haven't stopped moving since the minute I got up this morning, and the last thing I had to eat was my free lunch and a couple of bites of strained carrots when I was trying to convince Natalie how delicious they were by eating them myself.

“Watch the baby,” I say. Or maybe snarl. Either way, Amber doesn't answer.

I go out into the kitchen and dig around for something to eat. All the stuff we bought back in January with Mom's winnings is long gone, but I have hope the rest of my family isn't as smart as me when it comes to hunting and gathering. Behind the pots and pans in the drawer under the oven, I find a hidden box of mac and cheese.

While the macaroni's cooking, I get the last of the margarine and scrape off all the breadcrumbs and throw that bit in the garbage. We don't have any milk, so I use water. Not the first time.

When the food's ready, I take the pot and a fork out into the living room and plop my ass down on the floor in front of the space heater to eat my gourmet dinner. I haven't heard a peep out of Amber and Natalie's not crying or anything, so I pretend like I live here alone. It's almost peaceful, and my stomach unclenches a little. I scarf the whole thing by myself, resting the pot in my lap for warmth.

Later, after I've brushed my teeth with water so cold that I swear there are little ice crystals in it, I go back to our room. Amber's got the blankets hanging up again. Natalie's asleep in her expired car seat and I lift her out, praying I don't wake her. I put her in my bed between me and the wall so she won't fall out, and I turn off the light. We're afraid Nat will freeze to death in her crib, so lately we've been taking turns sleeping with her.

I know I should let it go for tonight, but I can't. “Are we ever going to talk about it?”

Silence.

“You didn't even let me explain.” Nat wiggles next to me, her body warm against my chest. “I only applied to see if I could get in. I wasn't going to take off or anything. I want you to come with me.”

“To Kansas?” she finally asks, like I've suggested a trip to Iraq. “Why the hell would I want to go there?”

“I don't know . . . I just . . . It's a really good opportunity for me, and in four years—”

“What kind of an opportunity?”

That's when I realize she doesn't know about the automotive restoration course, that she thought I'd just randomly picked Kansas. Like anyone would do that. For the next ten minutes I tell her all about the program. The bedroom is dark and cold and she doesn't say a word, but I can hear the excitement building in my voice and for the first time since I saw Amber with that letter, my stomach relaxes. I tell her how much I'll learn, how I'll never have to worry about a job or money again, how I could take care of us all. I give her the hard sell, and then I wait to see what she thinks.

“What about me?” she asks.

“What do you mean? I just said—”

“Yeah,” she says. “I heard you. I . . . I . . . I . . . But what about Aunt Ruby and the Glass Slipper? What about our apartment? What about our plans to buy a house together?”

My stomach tightens again as I try to explain. “Aunt Ruby isn't even forty yet. She's not gonna retire anytime soon. You could go with me, and in four years—”

“What? I'm supposed to go along to be the babysitter?”

“I thought you could maybe get a job. Or you could go to college too.”

“Yeah, right. I hate high school, so sign me up for four more years.”

“It's not the same thing—”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, Am—”

“No,” she says. I hear a scuffling noise, and then the light comes on and she's standing over me and I'm blinking up at her. Natalie squirms and whimpers next to me.

“Amber—”

“You lied to me. I know you took the SATs. I went back and asked Ms. Spellerman. She said you even took a class on Tuesday nights. All those times you said you were seeing David you were lying to me. And I was happy for you, excited you'd finally met a nice guy. But now, after that, I can't trust you, Crys. I'm not leaving my family and moving to the middle of nowhere with you. If you won't stick to our plan, then forget it. You're on your own.”

“But—”

“Leave me alone. I'm going to sleep.”

I struggle to get up, but Natalie's body is pressed against me, and she's finally fallen asleep again—​I really don't want to wake her. Amber switches off the light and I decide to let her have the last word for tonight. But then I can't help myself. “We'll talk about it tomorrow.”

“No, we won't.”

This time I keep my mouth shut. I lie there in the dark, telling myself I can fix this. Somehow I'll make Amber realize I'm doing this for us. I cuddle our sweet baby close and something magical happens, like it always does when she's in my arms. My body relaxes, the worries I carry all day melt a little, and this basic need to take care of Natalie and protect her wells up inside of me, like soothing warm water and some sort of longing combined. My mind shuts down and I sleep until she wakes me at five in the morning by tugging on my hair.

“Stop that.” I pry her little fingers out of my curls and drift off again. I know she's awake next to me, but I'm so tired I can't shake off sleep. Maybe she'll lie there quietly for a while. “Go back to sleep. Please?”

At first she's happy it's a new day, and she lies there babbling, but after a while, because she's a baby and she doesn't care if I'm about to drop dead from exhaustion, she decides it's time to get up. She wiggles around, squirming and kicking. Then she grabs my arm, digging her sharp little nails into the skin.

“Ouch!”

She's probably hungry and undoubtedly wet, and I know I have to get up, but I just want five more minutes. When I don't respond, she starts to whimper and kick me harder. It's so cold in the room, I can't face the day yet. I try again to cuddle her. But I know it's a lost cause when she starts to scream.

“Okay, fine. I'm getting up.” I drag myself out from under the covers into the icy air.

There's noise from Amber's side of the room and then she bumps into me in the dark. “Where is she?” she asks. “I'll take her.”

“Really?”

“I'm awake anyway.”

She lifts Natalie out of my bed and they go into the living room. As I settle back in for a couple more hours of sleep, I feel a huge sense of relief. Amber didn't sound angry at all. She must've forgiven me.